applying rain and snow shield

I am posting today over at Simple-Green-Frugal about taking care of our own place in the world first.

Happy Birthday Trace!

Can’t believe my baby dog is two!!  He is turning into a good dog, and settling down fast for an Aussie. 

I know enough about myself, to know when I have lost interest in a project.  This year it is gardening.  The last few years I have been spending a lot of time and mental energy in the gardens, and not in my pastures.  This year is the year of pastures not gardening.  Don’t get me wrong, I am still gardening with vengeance, but I am checked out mentally – my mind is on high density stock grazing and moving my cows every 12 hours.  AND I am loving the extra contact with the cattle.  It’s kind of a food chain type of thing – around here the livestock get taken care of first, and plants next. 

Visible in the picture:  2 rows Uncle John dry beans, Veda’s purple pole beans, Joan rutabagas, Red Cored Chantenay carrots, Turga and Andover parsnips, Lutz beets.

Not visible:  Raven and Cocozelle zucchini, Diamant celeriac, Ventura celery, Packman broccoli, Cheddar and Graffiti cauliflower, Azure Star and Kolibri kohlrabi, Nelson and Napoli carrots, Early Bird, Danish Ballhead, Charmant, Ruby Ball, and Melissa cabbage, Oliver and Red Rubine brussels sprouts, Mishayage and Nero Di Tondo radishes, National Pickling, Marketmore 76, and Lemon cucumbers and too many lettuces to list.

Visible from this view:  Viking Purple potatoes, Music and Oregon Blue garlic, Sweet Meat winter squash and Styrian Naked Seed pumpkins.

This garden is giving me a major headache this year.  The fertility is not as high as it should be, and the weed pressure is too high.  Couple this with lack of fortitude and I have some big failures.  I have given up on my onions, but the garlic is doing good.  20-20 hindsight is always so clear.  I planted in weedy ground and now I am paying for it. 

My plans now are to take half this garden out of production next year and work on the weed problem.  Famous last words.

This is the same garden looking back towards the potatoes.  In the forefront Abenaki Calais Flint corn, Welcome TSW sweet corn, Buckwheat cover crop, Green Arrow and Sugar Snap peas.

Not too visible in this light:  Lutz beet, Joan rutabaga, and Harris Model parsnip seed plants.  Under the row cover are a few daikon radishes and Hakurei turnips.  Also hard to discern are some miscellaneous cabbages, Detroit Dark Red beets, Nelson carrots and Kolibri kohlrabi.

I guess there is always next year… .

Sugar Snap sunset

My life changed forever when my brother was diagnosed with cancer – I started to actually see the part we all play in the world we live in.  And I made changes. 

I decided to rant about that today over at Not Dabbling in Normal.

One thing about living in an old house, is you come across old stuff.  I loved my Hangdog’s brand spanking new log house because it was clean, but it was new, even if the trees he built it out of weren’t.  No hand writing on the wall, no flotsam and jetsam of someone else, nothing  had fallen between the cracks.  But an old house, where people have lived, farmed, cooked, preserved and gardened is sure to continue to reveal something of a summer gone by – of course it helps that I am easily amused and something of collecting nerd. 

So last week as HD began tearing off more roof, to begin roofing yet another section of this house that my grandfather built, a little light was shed on nooks and crannies that haven’t seen the light of day in a while.

My gardening calendar is already in fall and winter, since most of my winter garden is planted, either in the garden or in flats for transplanting soon.  So imagine my delight when these two fellas surfaced!

No not the Jonas Brothers!  The Gill Brothers of seed house fame in Portland, Oregon. 

Their first annual fall gardening catalog.  This puppy came out the summer my mom was expecting her last (chuckle) baby, my older sister.  She probably didn’t pay much attention to it, I am guessing.  Thank heavens my mom was a packrat – because finding something like this just makes my day!  It’s a little bent, and wrinkled, but so is my sister (bigger chuckle guffaw.) 

The catalog mostly lists flower bulbs for fall planting, but a little food like garlic, multiplier onions and rhubarb made their way in.

Winter coles.

This basket of small cabbage heads are from the cabbage that overwintered, was cut this spring and has formed central heads again.  A mix of open-pollinated and hybrid varieties but all very tender and succulent.  These plants were originally planted last July, they survived the greenhouse collapsing on them, freezing temperatures, heavy snows and harvesting this spring, only to regrow like this in beautiful condition with no care whatsoever.  I wouldn’t count this being repeatable, but hey I take good food when ever I can get it!

All work and no play makes Throwback’s hubby crabby   

So on his holiday from work on the 4th of July, Hangdog worked on the roof.  Hay and roof need to get done at the same time this year.

While he was on the roof, I baked these rolls for the potluck we were invited to.

And we loaded up the noise maker… .

Take me to the river, drop me in the water

Enjoyed the view of the view up river. 

Ate lots of good food, and stood around a fire even though it was 95°.

Watched the sunset over the Columbia River.

And watched the moon rise.

We had a great 4th of July!!

Little Sweets

No cabbage heads yet?  Make kraut from leafy greens instead.  I’m posting about this over at Simple-Green-Frugal Co-op today.

Have a great Independence Day!!

Everywhere I turn, something needs planting, harvesting, weeding, cooking, feeding, hauling, picked up, butchering, watering and moving.  The days are long and the nights are short.  I’ll just try to say it in photos.  Food, slow and close to home.

I think I may have vanished into thin air… .  They do too!

Don’t let people tell you Cornish Cross won’t graze – if they didn’t, this broth and schmaltz would not be golden.

And the the broth is gelatinous too.  Perfect for adding extra nutrition to your cooking.

Hakurei salad turnips and Mishayage Daikon radishes.  These are not your grandmother’s turnips.  We snack on these like apples they are so sweet.  And the greens are good too.

Another myth:  It’s hard to grow celery in the home garden.  Of course, it won’t look like the stuff from California.  But it will take neglect, low water, and is great for adding flavor to summer salads and soups.

Been spending some time here harvesting too… .

Grassfed tallow awaiting rendering.

Our share of Blackie.

Himalayan blackberries on the way.  Love/hate relationship with these noxious weeds!

Garlic scapes.

Found again currants near the corral.

Meat and milk on the hoof.

Kohlrabi

Crunchy lettuce for a quick dinner.

Parsnip seed

Styrian seed pumpkins

Kale planted last July.  Still kicking, but not for long.  This should have bolted but I guess a greenhouse on your head kinda changes the order of things.

January King cabbage from last July too, same greenhouse treatment… .  I don’t recommend this method of perpetual cabbage – just stick with reseeding.

Ruby Ball cabbage from last July.  Apparently I cut these in the right place on the stem to stimulate more head formation.  You can see how large these plants are – Melvin weighs about 75#’s.

Joan rutabaga seed.

Berries calling my name.

We’re pooped!

Hope all this didn’t make you too tired to check out Food Renegade’s Fight Back Friday collection of posts for July 3rd.  Looks like some good recipes, reviews and always some good opinions and facts!

Normally I look forward to the Sunday Oregonian.  New book reviews, lots of life-story obits, and other miscellaneous stuff.

This morning I am outraged, there is a article about getting closer to your food via taking a class to kill a buffalo on a farm, and the whole process of butchering the carcass. 

The article starts out innocently enough, with a picture of a minerally deficient/wormy buffalo standing next to a fence (it still hasn’t shed all of it’s winter hair), and then there is a photo of people lighting a smudge to honor the buffalo about to give up it’s life for this class.  Well, as I turned to the page and began reading, I smudged my pants.  While the farmer who purportedly cares for his herd of buffalo, stood nearby, the teacher took a full 10 minutes, and countless bullets to kill the animal.   Sorry people – that is SUFFERING!! I have to ask, how could the farmer let this happen, and and how do these people think they are even remotely prepared to teach such a class!  I am furious! 

If you are a Portland reader of my blog, I would urge you to boycott this farmer and his “healthy products” and certainly I would boycott TrackersNW, no wonder people want to quit eating meat because of inhumane practices.  To make an animal suffer, and then to eat it, is cruelty at the highest level.  When it became apparent that watching cowboy and Indian movies on TV wasn’t enough training, someone should have pulled out a knife and slit the poor animal’s throat to end the needless suffering.  Instead the farmer, gently nudges the animal with a broom stick.  Sickening…

If you want to eat meat and find a humane rancher/farmer, consult the Eatwild.comdirectory.  Jo and Frances spend tireless hours maintaining this website.  Not only are they good friends to have, they never stop their quest for getting out good information.  Thanks Jo and Frances, et al!  And if you want to learn more about getting close to your food, do go see Food, Inc. 

To read how a buffalo or any meat animal should be humanely dispatched read this blog post.  And if you feel up to it, complain to TrackersNW.  I hope they stick to squirrels from now on.

The challenge this week is wings.

Parsnip flower and friend.

 We don’t have too many flies to worry about, but I do like to keep Della comfortable since I have been pasturing her in such small areas with no shade.  BAD farmer, bad farmer.  Plus, she is such a piss ant to milk when she is annoyed by flies.  We both end up doing things we reget later… .

I’ve tried many different products, and then of course I have spent countless hours and money trying to make my own concoctions.  Usually with poor results.  I have finally settled on No-Fly repellent from Crystal Creek in Wisconsin.  Other products of their’s that I like are Saf-Cal a non-caustic calcium drench, and the Fresh-n-Easy calcium supplements.  Flies are kind of an indicator species, just like weeds.  Cattle with properly functioning adrenal glands won’t have flies.  I need to work on that part of the equation.  Sigh.  So using insecticide isn’t really solving all the problems you have with your cows.  Kinda like spraying for weeds.  We do want the weeds and flies to go away, but in way that does no harm.  So I prefer a repellent to an insecticide.

It’s hard to tell what Della dislikes more, the flies or the fly repellent.  The strong essential oils really bother livestock, so with that in mind, I prefer to wipe on the oil instead of spraying.  She still dislikes the procedure.

I keep my fly wipe cloth in a tightly lidded plastic container in my milking area.  When I want to apply fly wipe, I pour on a little repellent and let it soak into the cloth. 

 The cloth stays moist in the container. 

 Apply the fly repellent to your cow the same as you would your horse, using the repellent soaked cloth, rub the hair the wrong way. 

 Then rub the hair back down.  This really gets good, long lasting coverage. 

Della has her tail, so I try to concentrate on areas that she can’t reach with her switch.  Legs, front and back. 

 Especially the heels, to repel heel flies. 

 Under the belly. 

 Flank area. 

Tail head. 

 Udder. 

And surprising, the horns.  Huge blood supply here, and horn flies bite through the horn really irritating the cow. 

 To wipe in the eye area, take your cloth and wipe downward.  The cow will close her eye and this will avoid damage to tender skin.  Notice the oil on her horns. 

Ready for the day.